Saturday, January 8, 2011

It Continues

As promised:



Dwarfing the E-Mobile


Taking adavantage of the kindness of neighbors:



The starter wasn't hard to find, but the logistics of getting it quickly while I was in Las Vegas made it more of a challenge than I wanted. I ended up with a choice of either spending $100 to get the original part shipped fast, or get an über starter for about $75 more than the original starter but not have to ship it. Not such a hard choice. I got the starter home yesterday, bolted it up and quicker than you can say vroom-vroom, the Jeep was up and running. I really wanted to take it out for a drive, but decided that Friday evening traffic was not the time for a test drive. So Saturday morning I fired it up and E and I hit the town.

Ok hit the town is a bit of an exaggeration since it died two blocks from the apartment. But I was able to pull it onto a side street and into an illegal parking spot for the moment. After a few fruitless attempts at starting it, I popped the hood and pulled the air filter off the carb. While E started cranking it, I played with the levers, valves, etc. until it started up. Right away it sounded better than it had, and indeed a spin around the block confirmed it was good to go. So again we headed towards the empty part of the city.

Once we got to the wearhouses, which are largely abandoned on the weekends, we played around a bit. E got to drive around for a while, so she could see if she liked it, and we could figure out if counting on her to drive it in a crisis (to or from GG Jeep- as an example) was an option (short answer, maybe).

Things were going well, so I decided to expand the drive area. We hopped on 280S and cruised the freeway for 10 miles or so, discovering that the speedometer is not very accurate, and that the Jeep was not built for cruising on the freeway (just so we're clear- I knew that going in).

Ready to declare the adventure successful we headed towards Skyline Blvd which would take us to the Great Highway and then back home. I was a little concerned at a perceived lack of power, but pretty happy with the days events, until we came to the first stoplight. Crap, it's dead, and it won't start. At least we're headed mostly downhill, so I hop out to wave traffic around and had E get behind the wheel. I pushed, she steered and we got out of harms way. By the way, steering this thing with the engine off (meaning no power steering) is not easy, and she handled it well.

Applying what I learned from the days earlier adventures, I popped the air-filter off, and held the choke open while E turned the key... that did the trick and we were on our way again. Though, for some reason the idle was now way off, so I couldn't take my foot off the gas or the engine would die (and probably not start without me getting under the hood again) so I ended up getting it home by breaking with the left foot while keeping my right foot on the gas.

I adjusted the carb and we took it out again. This time without incident. So I'm calling it progress. It's still not running how it should, but it is running, and that's a big improvement.

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